For a long time I’ve been suspicious of the interpretation of commodity fetishism that equates use-value with good, and supposedly illusory exchange-value with bad (an interpretation that seems to miss so much of what’s going on in chapter 1 of Capital), and object-oriented philosophy might allow for an interpretation of Capital in which commodities would be, as autonomous objects, liberated from the realm of necessity as part of the same movement that liberates humans from that realm.

So, Jamie, I’m not sure I agree with your moralizing objection to objectification – after all, a commitment to the philosophy of the subject didn’t prevent a whole raft of modern thinkers from contributing to the objectification of women and people of color. The main group of people I know of working on this question are the scholars associated with the Carribbean Philosophical Association, who, like Harman, start from an unorthodox reading of phenomenology. As far as I know, these two groups of dissident phenomenologists haven’t come into much contact, but I’d be interested to find out what would happen if they did.

Here are the relevant quotes:

”I stubbornly hold the opinion that philosophy has nothing whatsoever to tell the world about ethical issues. I’ve seen the horror this standpoint has generated in the past. In particular Marxists consider it a betrayal of the contemporary philosophical project. I do not mean to be provocative when I say this, but Marx over-extended philosophy when he thought it could change the world for the better. I agree with Zizek up to a point: the point is to interpret. One of the best things about reading Graham Harman is the absence of the political. I like my metaphysics politically disinterested.”

and

”Might I sneakily suggest that object oriented philosophy is the perfect philosophy for capitalism (and I say this not in a negative sense since I am politically neutral). In a way this would be a kind of maturity in that philosophy will have come to terms with the stick. On the other hand for many people it might be seen as too close for comfort, but we’re not trying to affirm the critical stance in speculative realism. Quite the opposite. Watch out for speculative capitalists. It’s all in the name baby.
”

I would stress that I’m not actually all that interested in Marxism V Capitalism per se so much as the interesting divides it seems to prop up between philosophers. Personally I have no idea what the appeal of politics is to anyone.

Nick Srnicek makes the following claim in a recent interview:

”Do we really need another analysis of how a cultural representation does symbolic violence to a marginal group?”

In most of the interviews I’ve conducted with the speculative realists there seems to be a divide between Marxists who dig the materialist possibilities offered by SR and the fairly disinterested political vibe from the object oriented guys.

I’m pretty sure every philosophical movement in history since Marx has played a variation on this theme out.

I know that it is customary in the this corner of blogosphere to praise Harman for his wit and originality, but anyone who has ever read a page of his ego-centric “philosophy” blog can probably tell that book “that all of us would approach with greatest interest” is in fact only an ideal for Harman himself as most people are not in favor of being objectified, especially those who in fact have been objectified for a long time (women, minorities, non-whites, disabled, etc etc) – Harman’s object-oriented approach is not only mostly nonsensical, but also seems to be politically irresponsible and even dangerous.

Well, I suppose I am just being a “troll” here or is it a “vampire”?

I’ve been wondering for a while if anyone would place object-orientated theory alongside Marx’s materialism. It could be a profitable endeavour. If I remember correctly Marcuse certainly writes about object-object relations when tackling Hegel’s Logic, but how succesfully I’m unsure.

Obviously, the mysterious and phenomenal commodity is obscured for reasons different to the two-fold character of objects in Graham’s analysis, yet there seems to be an overlap of sorts. And it strikes me that whilst Marx and Engels’ materialism might be an insufficent ‘science’, it is laudable for many other reasons and could benefit from being supplemented with a more rigourous understanding of objects.

I’m working on a response, though I’ll likely post it over at my site, it’ll be a bit long.